CLOSED: Winners – Heather Martin-Trigg; Linda Veal; Andra Howman, Julie Eagles
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] A [/dropcap]s a reader of Bluestone Magazine, you love art, right? Of course you do – and being able to frame your favourite artworks is even better.
Through the generosity of one of our subscribers, Gary Stephens from Camperdown Picture Framing, we are offering our other paying subscribers the chance to win one of four, $50 gift vouchers for framing work.
All you have to do to be in the running is be a paying subscriber (if you haven’t made the leap, you can do so here) and email us your mailing address at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au with the subject line: framing.
Entries will close next Sunday (13/7) at noon and we will announce the winner that night on our Facebook page (and contact you directly).
Thankyou so much, Gary, for supporting Bluestone as a paying subscriber and offering such a terrific prize to encourage others to follow your lead.
[box] You can find Camperdown Picture Framing at 23 Manifold St, Camperdown, or contact Gary on 0410 442 224 / 03 5593 2136. [/box]
Forget cover ups: roll right over Rolf
Convicted pedophile Rolf Harris happens to paint: does this mean his art is worth more than sending a strong message to sexual abuse survivors? Image: The Guardian.
OPINION
[dropcap style=”color: #a5cecd;”] T [/dropcap] wo very unsettling things have emerged from the debate over whether a mural by convicted pedophile Rolf Harris should be kept in Warrnambool’s Lighthouse Theatre, and neither offer any comfort to victims of sexual abuse.
The first was a comment by Warrnambool City Council chief executive officer Bruce Anson in which he compared Harris’s systemic abuse of minors to an artistic “foible” – a weakness, a blemish on his character, a minor flaw.
Here is the quote in full, as taken from the Warrnambool Standard report of July 2:
“I’m not justifying in any way what has happened (but) I don’t think we should destroy art as a result of inappropriate behaviour.
“Many of our great artists had foibles.”
A dirty old man in a rain coat who sexually abuses children is seen as the predatory pervert that he is, whereas an entertainer who fooled the world with his charm and natty dress sense – and who also sexually abuses children – is considered to have a “foible”?
I waited for the torrent of outrage against Mr Anson’s comments, but there was barely a trickle, despite Mr Anson holding one of the most influential positions in our city.
Warrnambool City Council CEO Bruce Anson earlier this week described Harris’s behaviour as a “foible”, but the outrage was saved for the Rolf Harris mural. Image: ABC Radio
[dropcap style=”color: #a5cecd;”] T [/dropcap]he outrage was instead saved in response to calls by some – including Bluestone Magazine via our Facebook page – that the Rolf Harris mural be painted over. Bluestone supports this move in order to send a clear message that the work of a convicted pedophile should not be honoured via public display in a public building.
If the Rolf Harris work was on a canvas, instead of a wall, it would be removed immediately (as is happening elsewhere in Australia), but because it is on a wall, we need to be even braver and bolder in our response and this is where we have become weak-kneed.
Despite Harris painting this mural in the very same year as he was actively abusing minors, the artwork is seen by some as separate to the artist, as if one Rolf Harris is the jocular painter, and “another” Rolf Harris is the pedophile.
This is a false comfort, as the hand that held the brush that created this mural is the same hand that could not keep itself off children – the art and the artist are inseparable.
There is also an argument that because Harris happens to be a visual artist, his “work” immediately deserves higher status and preservation than, say, the work of a pedophile priest, teacher or judge who – once exposed for their crimes – are stripped of all public honour.
Imagine if the Lighthouse Theatre decided to stage a musical tribute to pedophile and Harris associate, Jimmy Savile? Would we be as forgiving of the need to preserve his talents as an entertainer?
Would we tolerate a musical tribute at the Lighthouse Theatre to the late entertainer, and pedophile, Jimmy Savile? Image: The Guardian.
[dropcap style=”color: #a5cecd;”] B[/dropcap]y keeping the Harris mural in place, we are sending a message to every victim of sexual abuse that a piece of art is worth more than them: that we, as a community, value the work of a convicted, systemic abuser more than we value them.
We can argue around it, through it and over it, but that is is the bottom line.
If we keep the mural, we must also be prepared to argue that a recent work by a convicted pedophile is more precious to our collective community consciousness than standing up for the one in three girls and one in six boys who are sexually abused in Australia.
But wait, some say, the history of art is littered with examples of child abusers having their work celebrated in public, such as Caravaggio’s erotic paintings of young boys painted in the 17th Century.
I would like to think we have come a long way as a society in four centuries and understand – fully and painfully – the lifelong ramifications of child sexual abuse that, in the case of Harris, is clear cut.
I am also still struggling to find an artist who is a convicted pedophile and is still feted by the public – Caravaggio included.
[dropcap style=”color: #a5cecd;”] S[/dropcap]o why not just cover the mural up, as has been suggested?
Because that, to me, is a cop out. It says we are frightened to make the tough call and that one day, when we all “get over it”, the cover will come down again. Otherwise, what is the point?
Collectors can keep all of their Rolf Harris’s in their private collections and galleries – although it appears that the Queen has disposed of her portrait – but there is only one thing to do with our Harris mural: run a paint roller right over it.
Gather a group of women who have suffered sexual abuse (you won’t have to look far) and invite them to reinterpret the mural as a work of defiance: a work that says, loudly, we will not tolerate or condone this man’s disgraceful behaviour, no matter how well he paints.
With this work, we have the opportunity to make a very clear statement about a living, breathing sexual predator who happens to be an artist, and we at Bluestone are dumbfounded as to why it is proving so hard.
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Brian Fitzgibbon and Anthony Kelly winch the original Fletcher Jones cross up the silver ball for one of the last times. Image courtesy Amy Fitzgibbon.
[dropcap style=”color: #a5cecd;”] T [/dropcap]he mystery of the missing Fletcher Jones cross has been solved, and, unfortunately, the ending is not pretty.
As we wrote recently, the very first illuminated cross that sat on top of the Fletcher Jones silver ball water tower in Warrnambool every Christmas and Easter for about 20 years has not been seen since it was removed from the ball sometime in the 1980s.
The replacement cross – made of aluminium – has also since been replaced by a newer, more eco-friendly illuminated cross that no longer tops the silver ball, but the Warrnambool Uniting Church in Koroit St.
One of the few people who knew the first two crosses intimately was Brian Fitzgibbon, who worked at Fletcher Jones’ for 15 years as a leading hand in the maintenance department.
“It was made of galvanised iron folded over, with fluorescent lightbulbs running up each of its sides, that were then covered in perspex: all of which made it very, very heavy,” Brian said.
The cross, which was made by Bill Lovell and Alan Beales, was winched into place before each Christmas and left until after Easter, but one year things went awry.
“It was blowing an absolute gale, harder than it’s even blowing today,” Brian said.
Amid the atrocious conditions, the cross was hauled into place but, Brian now confesses, he forgot to fully secure one of the toggles that held the cross in place.
“So the wind is working away, working away, and the toggle is getting looser and looser and eventually the cross crashed completely on its side,” he said.
The cross broke in half from the fall and was partly dangling over the side of the silver ball in a spectacle that was apparently captured by the local newspaper, The Warrnambool Standard.
Unfortunately Brian can’t remember the exact date that it happened, but he does remember the awful guilt at having not fully secured the toggle.
“I will admit it, I am the one to blame,” he said.
The damaged cross was relegated to the skip bin and a new, aluminium cross – the one now in storage at the Warrnambool City Council depot – was hastily assembled to appease a very unhappy public.
“We modelled the new one on the star that they used to have at the Warrnambool Drive-In, which had lights all around the outside,” Brian said.
“It was so, so much lighter and easier to handle.”
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CLOSED , JUNE 24. Winners Katrina Brightwell and Janis Bennett
[dropcap style=”color: #8f9f59;”] W [/dropcap]e were delighted to get a call from the Bethany Arthouse Film Festival offering us some free double passes to give away to lucky paying subscribers.
The first of these double passes, to the magnificent film Fill the Void – screening in Warrnambool on August 5 – have already been offered via an email competition to our paying subscribers. To be in it, you must be a paying subscriber and be among the first five to email us at editor@bluestonemagazine.com.au.
We have two double passes (valued at $44 each) to Fill the Void and the winners will be announced later this week.
In the next couple of weeks will offer our paid subscribers the chance to win one of another two double passes, this time to the heart warming movie, Cloudburst, starring Olympia Dukakis, screening in Warrnambool on August 26.
If you are a paying subscriber, you will be notified by email when this competition opens.
Find out more about the Bethany Arthouse Film Festival here. To join the Bluestone Club as a paying subscriber – $8 per month or $85 per year – subscribe here.
Thankyou Bethany for supporting Bluestone Magazine.
Community vision needs to extend city wide
The imminent sale – and at least partial demolition – of the former Sandilands Hotel/Maddens Lawyers building in W’bool is expected to pave the way for new apartments in the CBD.
OPINION – JULIE EAGLES
A vision without a task is but a dream. A task without a vision is drudgery. But a vision and a task are the hope of the world. – Church in Sussex England, 1730.
[quote]
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap]n 2008, over several months, a great process of community consultation involving hundreds of people developed a community vision for the Warrnambool CBD called the Warrnambool City Centre Structure Plan. The vision was for an ‘alive, thriving, culturally rich city heart.’
We not only developed a community vision for the CBD, but also community values, community goals, preferred development scenarios and five future directions with strategic objectives – in other words – amazingly, we came up with a detailed framework to work towards achieving our community vision!
The people who facilitated this process were incredibly skilled and experienced. The process was fun, creative and interesting and there were lots of ways to participate.
Perhaps most amazingly – because I had never experienced it in Warrnambool before – was the ongoing and detailed feedback and updates to participants and to the whole community throughout the process.
It was, to quote Tanya Egan, (The Warrnambool City Council’s Business Support Manager) “the most exhaustive public planning process ever undertaken by Warrnambool City Council……in collaboration with the community.”
It was developed in response to a recognition that people were often “frustrated in the past because they hadn’t been asked for input from the beginning” – underpinned by the principle “that if a community is to own the plans that will shape their future, then it has to participate in developing them from the outset – not somewhere along the way.”
Very big tick.
The series of W’bool laneway events, like this print workshop run by South-West TAFE Creative Arts students, show what can happen when a community works together.
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap] felt very satisfied with that visioning and planning process six years ago. I am sure I’m not alone, however, in being frustrated that nothing much seemed to happen for a long time afterwards. Or was it that the communication lines seemed to falter and then stop?
After all, we’ve had the wonderful Lighthouse theatre re-development and then the fantastic laneways festival led by The F Project and supported by Council.
Most recently, in the past month, there’s been a follow up, and by all accounts also a very good, community planning process that honed in on re-designing the streetscape for two blocks of Liebig St stretching from Koroit St to Raglan Pde.
This time I chose not to take part, but I’m glad lots of other people did. I couldn’t quite understand how this process linked to what we’d done six years ago and so either the communication didn’t convey this clearly enough or I missed it.
It could be that I was just not that interested in redesigning two blocks of Liebig St – we don’t all have to be involved in every plan!
The campaign to Save the Silver Ball and Fletcher Jones Gardens grew from concerns about the loss of iconic buildings and structures in Warrnambool.
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”] I [/dropcap]n 2009, just after the community visioning process for the CBD, I joined the council’s City Development Advisory Committee where we received lots of information and requests for our input into all sorts of plans.
All of these plans were important at various levels, but I got lost in the detail and I couldn’t see the guiding vision and values that held them all together: I was interested in seeing the community vision, values and goals that guided all of these plans.
And this is what I would still love to see and what I think we really need: a community vision that inspires, guides and drives all our plans for development in Warrnambool (and our town centres of Woodford, Dennington and Allansford).
A community strategic plan, a city wide structure plan… whatever ‘planning speak’ might label it.
Developing a city-wide community vision is about shaping our future within the context of the changing and challenging global, national, regional and local worlds in which we exist. The people who ran the CBD visioning process six years ago understood this.
One of the questions they asked was – what are the external trends and issues affecting the City Centre today that may influence the future? The facilitators believed that within any community all the skills, knowledge, passion and capacity necessary to progress already exist.
They were guided by a set of principles for “helping groups move from uncertainty to purpose.”
These include that:
Council is part of the broader community team and not the fount of all knowledge and power.
Council’s role is to show leadership by bringing people together in an environment where everyone feels secure about sharing their hopes, aspirations and views and that, in a safe space, people will focus on common ground, not on difference.
For things to happen, Council must work collaboratively with all the players in that complex network of organisations and individuals that make the community function every day.
I was always thinking during that process – wouldn’t it be great if we were doing this not just for the CBD, but for the whole of our city!
A revamp of the northern end of Liebig St is the first major project to grow from the community driven CBD plan developed six years ago.
[dropcap style=”color: #a02f2f;”]A [/dropcap] city wide visioning process would allow community debate and discussion about our strengths and what we think are the key issues and challenges facing our city now and in the future.
It would allow us to talk about our aspirations and dreams and what we most value about our community and our natural and built environments. To talk about what give us our sense of place and belonging? What do we want to preserve, what do we want to create, what do we want to change?
Community visioning projects are now fairly commonplace across municipalities around Australia (and the world). The community visioning process for the CBD, that began 6 years ago, deserves to be replicated to a city wide plan.
In many ways, we can’t afford not to do this.
As somebody said to me recently “if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up anywhere.”
[box] Julie Eagles has been a leader of the Warrnambool Planning and Heritage Group (WPHG) since 2006. ‘Save the Silver Ball and Fletcher’s Gardens’ campaign is an offshoot of WPHG and their work to highlight issues that contribute to demolition by neglect of important heritage places.[/box]
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